It’s exciting news for those who have pushed for better use of new media at the Vatican. Interestingly, the Twitter presence was launched the day Pope Benedict published his letter to Irish Catholics on priestly sex abuse. As a result the first nine Vatican tweets were on the sex abuse issue, mainly citing past papal statements.

In the future, we’re promised, Twitter will be used by Vatican Radio and other Vatican media outlets when there’s particularly important news.

Getting the Twitter accounts off the ground took a while, and came only after other users grabbed the Vatican moniker, apparently without anyone’s authorization. We blogged about this pseudo-Vatican Twitter feed in January, and a week later it fell silent.